Make Your Friends Think You're in a Well-Read State

Unexpected index entry: Duels, 29

First line: "We are both hardcore partisans -- institutional partisans."

Title: Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause

Author: Richard Viguerie

Pages: 255

Back cover: Letter to readers

Ever a Post Writer?: No

Unexpected index entry: Alice in Wonderland (Carroll), 78

First line: "When conservatives are unhappy, bad things happen to the Republican Party."

Title: The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008

Author: Mark Halperin, John Harris

Pages: 454

Back cover: Campaign truisms

Ever a Post Writer?: Yes (Harris)

Unexpected index entry: Freud, Sigmund, 343

First line: "This book begins in the rain -- a cold, pelting, dismal rain that at times fell so hard it nearly obscured a remarkable moment in American politics."

Title: State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III

Author: Bob Woodward

Pages: 560

Back cover: Picture of President Bush

Ever a Post Writer?: Yes

Unexpected index entry: Lebanese Cooking Channel, 231

First line: "In late December 2000, less than a month before his inauguration, President-elect George W. Bush was still debating who should be his secretary of defense."

Barbara Bush in the Big Apple: The Not-So-Juicy Details

Hard to believe it's four months since we bade farewell to Manhattan-bound Barbara Bush and reluctantly handed off our obsessive monitoring of her shopping, dining and dating to the New York Post and the Daily News. Flipping through the tabs in search of her name is surprisingly frustrating: Either that Cooper-Hewitt job is keeping the dark-haired twin in at night, or maybe New Yorkers just don't care like we do.

June 7: Sees "Jersey Boys" on Broadway with her mom, who paid. (NYDN)

June 21: Dines with Jenna and friends at the East Village's Mermaid Inn. (NYDN)

June 28: Photographed "knock[ing] back a brewski" at Yankee Stadium. (NYP)

July 26: Shares pizza and splits the bill with Bush cousins Lauren and Ashley at Stanton Social. (NYDN)

Sept. 18: Attends a Calvin Klein party with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Lindsay Lohan. (NYDN)

READERS TELL US . . .

An Alexandria pyrotechnics expert quibbled with Leonard Slatkin's comment in Tuesday's column that he used fireworks for the NSO performance of the "1812" Overture because lasers are too dangerous. Bill Burdette wrote that laser light shows, when arranged properly, pose no risk of blinding the audience. He added that Slatkin's show was not the first time fireworks were used inside the KenCen -- Burdette himself set off the pyrotechnics for Concert Hall gigs by Suzanne Somers and Donny & Marie in the late '70s. To which we respond: Now that's what we call music!

Miami writes: A major faux pas in your reporting on Prince Andrew at the British Embassy [Sept. 27]. The beverage is Scotch "whisky"! By contrast, "whiskey" refers to the Irish and American kind. Perhaps you had one too many of one or the other before your deadline?

Yeah, but our copy editors were totally sober! We think. Pull your barstool over to reliablesource@washpost.com.